“Yes? Transmit where?”
“Earth. We’re going to hit every diplomatic consulate in turn, broad, unencrypted.”
Kugara hesitated, “Okay? Even the Caliph—”
Mosasa turned around and snapped, “Yes! Everyone! If anything trumps your narcissistic human political divisions, it’s this. This changes everything. I can’t account for this kind—” He abruptly stopped and stood up straighter. He allowed the emotion to leak out of his voice again. “You need to burst transmit all our telemetry and recon data. Now.”
“I’m packaging the data now.”
Nickolai closed his eyes and looked almost as if he was bracing for something.
“Transmitting,” Kugara said.
Something like a large rifle shot shook the bridge.
“What was that?” Dr. Dörner asked.
“—the hell?” Wahid said, and he began tapping madly at the display. “You see that, Parvi?”
“I have depressurization in the main maintenance tunnel. Damn. Major power drains on the main tach-drive.”
“I lost all data readings on the tach-comm,” Kugara said.
“Shit,” Wahid said, “that’s because we don’t have one anymore.”
The main holo display switched to one of the external cameras, pointing down at the stern of the Eclipse. A long contrail of ice crystals and debris emerged from a small hole in the skin of the ship, as if the ship was being followed by a small comet.
Did the tach-comm just blow up?
Mallory looked around and realized that Dr. Dörner was staring at him. Did I say something? Did I give myself away?
“What happened to the tach-comm unit?” Mosasa snapped.
“The diagnostic logs show an intense power spike at the time of transmission,” Kugara replied quietly.
“It spiked across the whole system,” Parvi said. “The drives are intact, but the tach-comm is interlinked with the damping system. It drained two thirds of the power reserves before vaporizing. We only have one damping conduit left at about fifty percent capacity.”
“No!” Mosasa snapped, slamming his hands down on the console in front of him. “We cannot have the tach-comm down. That communications link is essential.”
“Sir? Did you hear what I said?” Parvi’s voice was on the verge of cracking. “We’re down two thirds of our power reserves. That’s our return trip and our margin.”
“We have to repair the tach-comm. Communication is our number one priority!”
Everyone, bridge crew and scientists, stared at Mosasa as their nominal leader stared into the holo before him, watching the ice cloud of venting gases fade as the ship sealed off the damaged section. “We need the communication link back up.”
If anything, the look of shock on Mosasa’s face was worse now than when he heard an entire star was missing.
“I’m sorry,” Wahid said. “From all the engineering data, there’s nothing left to repair. The surge completely vaporized the main transmission coils, as well as the primary power damping coils. We only got half of one secondary coil to keep the drives from overheating. We’re damn lucky we didn’t suffer a main drive failure. We don’t even have the power to spare for a transmission, even if I could pull a new coherent emitter out of my ass.”
Mosasa shook his head, hands clutching the console in front of him. At the moment he looked way too human.
Only one third power, Mallory thought. That’s less than two fully-powered jumps. That can’t even get us halfway back.
He could see that understanding sinking into the faces of the rest of the crew, except for Nickolai’s, who appeared as enigmatic as ever. Mosasa stared at the console in front of him, whispering, “Was this planned?”
“Sir?” Parvi asked.
Mosasa pushed himself upright. “We need to conserve power and get to a colony where we might be able to repower the ship and repair the damage. Everyone on maintenance duty, I want the drives checked out. Make sure they suffered no other damage.”
“What colony?” Wahid asked.
“The closest one is HD 101534. It is eight light-years away and leaves us with an acceptable margin in our remaining power reserves.”
If it is still there, Mallory thought.
Most of the crew had things to do, checking out the integrity of the tach-drive, doing what they could to fix the damping system, repairing the breach made by the failing tach-comm, plotting a course to the next nearest “lost” colony. Even the scientists finally had some work, trying to decipher exactly what happened to Xi Virginis.
That left Mallory alone in the common room, wondering exactly what the meaning of all of this was. Even if the tach-drives themselves were undamaged, they were effectively stranded, as isolated from the rest of humanity as these far-flung colonies themselves.
And, deep in his soul, he felt an approaching doom. It wasn’t a fear of death. The doom he felt coming was far from that personal.
Xi Virginis is missing . . .
And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth . . .
He was Catholic, and a Jesuit, so he had always had a pragmatic view of his own faith in the face of the observable universe. He was comfortable with a God that spoke to him in allegory and metaphor, the beauty of the natural world was enough to shore his faith in God, and the wickedness of his fellow man was enough for him to believe in Satan. He believed in the spiritual world, the presence of Christ at the Mass, and in the holiness of the saints. He believed in good and evil.
And, deep in his soul, he felt that the Eclipse had crossed into something whose evil was nearly beyond human comprehension. He could not objectify the feeling, give himself a rational basis for it. A missing star was strange, but across creation there were certainly things stranger. It would be the height of arrogance to presume that man had plumbed the depths of what was possible.
But, to Mallory, the absence of Xi Virginis was worse than unexplained, it was malignant. It represented something abhorrent in the universe: the snake in Eden, Satan tempting Christ in the desert, the Dragon from Revelation.
The more he thought of the magnitude of evil, the more he thought he was a poor instrument to face it. He could draw on his military experience to face the worldly issues posed by the Caliphate. But this? He was a professor. He didn’t even have a parish. When it came to spiritual matters, he was as weak and insignificant a priest as anyone could hope to find.
“God give me the strength to do your will,” he prayed. “And grant me the wisdom to know what that is . . .”
“Amen, brother,” came Wahid’s voice from the doorway.
Mallory turned, startled, to look at his fellow mercenary. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Wahid shrugged. “Who’s expecting an enemy to jump them on their own ship?” He walked over and sat down on the couch across from Mallory. “Professional paranoia or not, it’s natural to let your guard down when you’re on your own ship.”
Mallory didn’t like where this was going, so he changed the subject. “So, you have the course to the next colony plotted in?”
“Yes, if the bastard’s still there.”
“Yeah . . .”
Wahid leaned forward. “You ever hear of a tach-comm failing like that?”
“No.”
“Neither has anyone else, you know. It’s one of those things that just doesn’t happen. Hell, it took Bill to come up with a model of exactly what happened.”
“What happened?”